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Comment by SllX | Hacker News Reader

> The robot arm performs a simple, repetitive job: lifting a piece of metal into a press, which then bends the metal into a new shape. And like a person, the robot worker gets paid for the hours it works.

So they hired Bender Bending Rodriguez. Fair enough.

More seriously, seems like the job market is in a perfect storm for more robots to be hired in workers’ steads. They’re not subject to “vaccine or testing mandates”, in fact they won’t even get COVID, they’re not going to unionize, and they’re not going to quit on you.

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they’re not going to unionize

This assumes we keep them just complex enough for the job. If computer scientists and developers make Bender too smart or cloud connect them, they may decide to hold a union vote. There was a trial in the science fiction show Star Trek the Next Generation to decide if Lt. Commander Data an android had rights and he won. Curious how far away such a scenario might be.

At this point my bending friend, that’s still a hypothetical that remains in the “believe it when I see it” phase of development.

>> They’re not subject to “vaccine or testing mandates”, in fact they won’t even get COVID, they’re not going to unionize, and they’re not going to quit on you.

No, but in this article they are being rented by the hour. Once you become dependent on them, their price will go up to whatever some outside company wants it to be - probably a bit above minimum wage and that's only in places where the work area hasn't yet been redesigned with the robot in mind. This will be danger until the robots become more of a commodity item, but that may eventually happen.

Maybe, but at this point in time I have no reason to think that the robot market will be uncompetitive and insulated from other sectors of the economy. Robot-rentals only need to be cheaper than the cost of the employee and deliver the same or approximately the same value to be competitive.

Wages are also not the only cost of employees.

> More seriously, seems like the job market is in a perfect storm for more robots to be hired in workers’ steads. They’re not subject to “vaccine or testing mandates”, in fact they won’t even get COVID, they’re not going to unionize, and they’re not going to quit on you.

And, unlike labor with payroll tax, you don't pay special supplemental taxes on automation rental.

Knew I forgot something!

Although I should at least point out that while true now, there’s nothing inherent to robots that insulates them from this. Tax policy is a human choice, so while not paying payroll taxes is an advantage for hiring a robot over a person today, that doesn’t stop human governments from enacting robot taxes.

> there’s nothing inherent to robots that insulates them from [taxation]

If automation really takes off and entire factories can be run by a handful of people it might make sense to move them to whatever low-tax country with a port. Pay the 5 employees running it extra to fly in there for a few months a year each (like oil workers) and if it's in a lawless region add some automatic turrets that shoot at anything unauthorized entering the perimeter. Makes sense as long as extra pay+extra shipping+ammo costs is less than the hypothetical robot taxes.

They can get viruses though

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